Why do some countries use denominations like 3 and 15?

A kind of follow up question to my question about the colonial pounds:

https://en.numista.com/forum/topic128877.html

When I look at my collection, I sometimes see denominations like 3 and 15, in decimal systems. Especialy in the former Soviet countries. But also Malta and Cyprus. Slightly less strange to me, is the 2½ of something in the Netherlands and Portugal and their then colonies.

My question is why?

I think it could be to encourage fewer spending/lower prices, like with the German 4 pfenning.

N#8463

Thinking with Malta it makes sense, when they didn't have a 1 mil. By having 2 and 3 mils it can add up to 5 mills?

Or from my experince sometimes you just miss a denomination. When I was in Nepal, I really missed a 200 Rupees note often. It felt strange to me to hand over multiple 100 Rupees notes.

Or any other explanation? 🤔🤓

The Soviet Union did have a 3 kopeck coin: N#766

My guess is that this was because the Soviet Union had fixed prices for everything, some products even had the same price from 1961 to 1991.

The three kopeck coin was practical since that was the price of initiating a local telephone call from a phone booth, and the time was limitless. In other words the coin slot of the telephone would accept the size and weight of a three kopeck coin.

As most people in the Soviet Union did not have their own telephone at home, they had to stand in line at a telephone booth to make a call.

Russian Empire and USSR minted 3 and 15 kopecks coins long before the fixed price economic, so for the USSR it is mostly a tradition I think. But generally reasons that such coins add flexibility for some cash devices may be a reason.

In USSR you should use 2 kopeck coins for phone call, not 3. You should use 5 kopeck for metro attendance. Maybe something may be done with 3 and 15 kopecks also

Grinya

Russian Empire and USSR minted 3 and 15 kopecks coins long before the fixed price economic, so for the USSR it is mostly a tradition I think. But generally reasons that such coins add flexibility for some cash devices may be a reason.

 

In USSR you should use 2 kopeck coins for phone call, not 3. You should use 5 kopeck for metro attendance. Maybe something may be done with 3 and 15 kopecks also

Okay, you most likely know better than I do. The person that told me might have remembered it wrong.

The person also told me that phone booths in the streets were for local calls only. Long distance phone calls could only be made from the post office where you had to stand in line to book a phone call with a clerk, who then told you the number of the phone booth ready for your call.

I also heard that  it has something to do with transaction and scarcity of coinage. If you have 1,2,3,5 denomination or so you need less coins to do any transaction. Probably not the case for 15.

What baffles me is Austria had 6, 7, 12, 15, 30 Kreuzer at relatively the same time. Yes it's not a metric currency and they are like ½, ¼, ⅕ etc.  but the 7 sticks out like a sore thumb in any system and I am not sure why it existed.

Yes, interesting the history of currency shows different denominations and even different accounting methods.

The decimal (tenths) system is relatively new. As you mentioned, for a long time, some countries halved currency units: 1, ½, ¼, 1/8 etc. (In fact, until 30 years ago the US stock market was also listed in eighths!) So we see things like the quarter dollar or 2 ½ gulden. In the US we now use a 5-cent coin (that we call a nickel because of its metal content) but before that we had the half-dime, and our quarter dollar is nicknamed “2 bits” after the Spanish real which could be divided into 8 bits. Thus 1 bit was 12 ½ cents.

In other cases, a currency would be fixed against another country at a particular exchange rate (ie: some Portugese colinies used 6 escudos coins which seems unusual at first), or the old UK system added florins and shillings to simplify accounting because their monetary system had trouble dividing by 7s and 9s. Check wikipedia for more info, it's more than I can relate here.

Anyway, there are many reasons that countries issue coins and banknotes in less common denominations. I think all the comments above are right and interesting!

BTW: other great examples are Cuba's 40-centavo coin and 3-dollar bill.

3 and 15 Kopeck coins have ancient roots. A 3 kopeck coin was called an Altin, which equivalated to a Turkish Akce and some copper coin in Eastern Europe.

The 15 Kopeck coin was previously a Zlotnik or worth the same as a Polisk Zloty in the 1700s and the Ottomans had Zolota worth 30 Para or ¾ of a Kurus - often old Russian Empire coins had these names. Some I know and I am sure a Russian or Polish person could add to these. Apologies for poor spellings etc - I don't speak Russian/Polski or Turkiye

¼ Kopeck = Polushka

½ Kopeck = Denga (A common unit in medieval Russian states) - most wire money coins were dengas or kopecks

1 Kopeck = Kopeck, silver penny until 1600s, then usually base metal or billon

3 Kopecks = Altin

5 Kopecks = Poli (Half) Grivnik

10 Kopecks = Grivnik, Grivnya

15 Kopecks = Zloty, Zlotnik

25 Kopecks = Poli Poltnik (Quarter Ruble)

50 Kopecks = Poltnik, Poltina

100 Kopecks = Ruble

There were also names for multiple roubles and coins issued for 3, 5, 10 and even 15 roubles. Platinum coins of the 1830s had 5,10, 15 Roubles and the soviets likely issued these weird denominations to stop the people hoarding change and making change from shopping more efficient. Giving back 3 Kopecks change from a 25 kopeck coin was more efficient than a 2 and 1 kopeck piece from 22 kopecks spent. Same with the 3 rouble note.

Yes, generally you are correct. Some corrections/more info:

• Silver wire kopecks were minted until 1717. Some time before there had been an attempt to become to make copper kopecks, but it led to Copper riot
• There were also 2 kopecks coins with unofficial name Grosz and 4 kopecks (dvugroshevik = double-grosz)
• 3 Kopecks had a nickname Altin, but use of this this name officially was prohibited by Peter I after his reform. I'm not sure that it corresponds to any Turkish or other currency just because it was just a name for 6 dengas that had different weight in different principalities. but possibly I don't know something.
• 5 kopeck had (and has) more common nickname Pyatak. 
• 10 Kopecks = Grivennik, but not Grivnya
• 15 kopecks had unofficial name Pyatialtynnik (five Altyns), but not zloty. Russian Empire minted coins for Poland with 2 denominations (15 kopecks/1 zloty), but it wasn't a nickname for 15 kopecks afaik.

Grinya

Russian Empire and USSR minted 3 and 15 kopecks coins long before the fixed price economic, so for the USSR it is mostly a tradition I think. But generally reasons that such coins add flexibility for some cash devices may be a reason.

 

In USSR you should use 2 kopeck coins for phone call, not 3. You should use 5 kopeck for metro attendance. Maybe something may be done with 3 and 15 kopecks also

I have a 2-Kopeck coin that my Father used for telephone calls in the USSR, he drilled a small hole and attacked string so when he was doen with a call, he would just pull the coin out by the string and re-use it, he said it saved him around 8 Rubles when he was couting

Cody404

I have a 2-Kopeck coin that my Father used for telephone calls in the USSR, he drilled a small hole and attacked string so when he was doen with a call, he would just pull the coin out by the string and re-use it, he said it saved him around 8 Rubles when he was couting

Yes, people were also doing it with 5-Kopeck coins at the metro entrance machines. And I am sure at many other places.

 In the UK there were 12 pennies in 1 shilling, in pre-decimal days. 

So 3 pennies was a quarter of a shilling. Then 20 shillings = 1 pound.  

iiruig

Cody404

I have a 2-Kopeck coin that my Father used for telephone calls in the USSR, he drilled a small hole and attacked string so when he was doen with a call, he would just pull the coin out by the string and re-use it, he said it saved him around 8 Rubles when he was couting

Yes, people were also doing it with 5-Kopeck coins at the metro entrance machines. And I am sure at many other places.

I've also got an interesting anecdote about Soviet people.

In the 1990's, after the Wall came down, I was attending an exhibition in a country of the former Soviet Union. The last evening there was arranged a get together with a free buffet. Those people obviously never heard of having seconds, so everybody piled up on their plates so high, that I was wondering how they would manage to carry it all to their table.  Needles to say that after a while the first half of the line had taken almost all that was intended to feed all, so the rest of the people had to suffice with the crumbs and undesired bits.

The case of Venezuela seems strange to me because they used until 2018 two incompatible systems, that is to say that coins cannot be added: 

1/8= 12.5c And 1/10=10c, 1/20=5c, 1/100=1c

The 12½ cents coins come from the days of the Spanish Dollars, each dollar was made up of 8 reales, so when these dollars became the peso or whatever new silver unit of the independent country, they went decimal, but often issued 25c and 50c coins which were the 2 and 4 reales of the old system and thus 12½c was the 1 reale of those systems.

Most countries abandoned the 12.5c coins after a while but Venezuela and Colombia kept them on longer. Also in many Caribbean countries, chopped up Spanish dollars became “bits” and each bit was 12½c or 1/8 of the dollar, hence the song, 2 bits, 4 bits a dollar.